


The Night Starts Here

by breakthisspell



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Crossover, Death, Genocide, Violence, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-13
Updated: 2013-06-13
Packaged: 2017-12-14 21:33:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/841626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/breakthisspell/pseuds/breakthisspell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At one point, Riza and Roy were told that the Airbender War of Extermination was being fought for the good of the people.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Night Starts Here

In the village, he was special—a prodigy, even.

But out in the battlefield, he is one of many, a soldier designed to kill and run, to watch as the bodies of Airbenders writhed and singed as his flames burn through flesh and bone.

At night, Riza, his master’s daughter, sharpens her arrows and aims perfect shot after perfect shot through the heavy fabric of their tent, the arrowheads suspended within the mesh until the Private moves to retrieve them. Roy warms himself against the chill of the Southern Air Temple, breathing a small fire into his hands.

Riza polishes an arrow with an orange cloth, head hung as she scrubs away the crusty residue of dried blood from the head. “This was from an Airbender child.”

“Eh?” Roy looks away from his hands to study her. “The arrow?”

“The cloth. An Airbender child wore it around his neck as I…” She trails off, but Roy understands. 

As she struck him down, pierced the arrow through his heart, and killed him.

“He clung to his master. He died in the poor man’s arms.” Riza’s voice is heavy despite her whisper.

“Oh,” Roy clears his throat. “Too many have died for this war,” he laments.

The arrow falls to the ground with a clang. Riza balls her hands into fists as she swallows the lump in her chest. “Don’t you think the Avatar would have shown himself by now? His people are being killed, I doubt he could stand idly by.”

A pregnant pause fills the tent.

“Major, I-I don’t think we’re fighting for the good of the people anymore.”

Roy turns to face Riza and no longer sees the youthful face of his master’s daughter; her bright eyes are heavy and darkened, deft and nimble hands stained with blood, melodic voice somber and raw.

He wonders how many Riza, the most skilled archer that their troop had to offer, has killed alone, and he muses that none of those killings were truly for the good of the people.

He yearns for the days in his master’s home, where his Firebending was revered and marveled at by her—now, neither can stare at the campfire without cringing, remembering the bodies ravaged by flame in each siege. He remembers when they were children and Riza’s arrows were sent into the bark of a tree or, in a more daring show of her skill, through an apple on top of a neighbor’s head; he only remembers those moments in fleeting, sees the arrows as what they truly are, what they always had been. An arrow is a weapon, used to tear through flesh and pierce skin, to send rivulets of blood pouring from the wounds they inflict. 

“I don’t think we ever were, Private.”

\--

The air smells like burning flesh and the iron tang of blood hangs heavily in the atmosphere.

The troops spend their third day at the Southern Air Temple, the Firebenders incinerating the temple bit by bit, the archers and swordsmen butchering those who survive the fires.

It’s funny, Roy thinks, in a grim way—to be in the Avatar’s alleged home, when the spirits have abandoned those in his birthplace so easily. Roy has never been very spiritual, but he hopes, as he sets a row of dormitories ablaze, that his victims are released into the Spirit World to live a life superior to their mortal one.

Bloodcurdling screams pierce the atmosphere as fire catches the interior of the cells, and Roy feels his stomach rolls into his throat, threatening to spill out its contents, now his meager breakfast rations from the morning.

He finds a bit of solid, scorched but intact land to kneel and catch his breath. He inhales, a deep breath in through the nose, a deeper breath expelled through the mouth, until a flash of black and red blazes through his peripheral vision.

A shout that dies in its owner’s throat, followed shortly by the sound of a limp weight dropping, are the only sounds Roy hears.

His head snaps to find Riza sprinting over to the body to retrieve her arrow. Supplies in the military had become short, too short to afford to replace most arrows shot by archers. Roy knows that Riza is ordered to retrieve every weapon she can find from her victims’ skin, but he has never been there to witness it.

The man—boy, really, he couldn’t have been more than sixteen—is still alive, his chest heaving as he gasps for breath. Riza slowly extracts the arrow from his chest, the arrowhead shiny and crimson and dripping with the boy’s blood. For a second, the heaves become more frantic, more and more desperate, until they suddenly stop altogether, his golden robes and the pavement surrounding him and Riza drenched in dark red.

Riza drops the arrow to her side unceremoniously, the metal clanging noisily on the pavement. It’s the only sound Roy hears for a while, until Riza hangs her head over the boy and whispers, _“sorry…I’m sorry,”_ clutches her arrow in one hand and its bow in the other, and walks away with her head still hung.

Roy looks away, placing his head on his knees, his hands on the nape of his neck. He wonders what it is like to feel death on his hands the way that she has, to feel the enemy shudder in his arms as their last breath escapes them. He wonders how many Riza has felt die already, and how many more she will have to endure throughout the course of the war.

He thinks back to what Riza asked him just the night before, that she doubts that they are fighting for the good of the people, and what had been hypothesis becomes fact—they’re fighting for Sozin’s own glory, for the glory of the Fire Nation, and extending that glory onto the other nations would only cause pain and suffering that their own bloodied hands would inflict.

Roy sighs into his kneecaps. The Airbender War of Extermination is just beginning, after all, with three other Air Temples to deface and thousands of other Airbenders to slaughter.

The scent of incinerated flesh blows through the temple once more, and Roy feels his stomach lurch, his blood boil, and his heartbeat race as he breaks into a cold sweat.

It’s going to be a long war.

**Author's Note:**

> I've had this WIP lying around for a while, so I finally decided to finish it to publish here. I've seen crossovers where characters from other series are put into the Fullmetal Alchemist universe, and not a lot of Avatar crossovers where other characters enter the Avatar universe, so here you go.


End file.
